deathwish3

If you thought Jaws: the revenge was a ridiculous sequel, then you should check this out, because it's possibly even more ludicrous. Everyones favorite vigilante ( except maybe for Travis Bickle, or D-Fens), Paul Kersey, is headed to an absolute dump of a neighbourhood to visit an old army buddy. Kersey has given up his occupation as a part time scum exterminator, but he still packs heat in case something should arise. Naturally, when he arrives at his freinds place, he finds that the neighbourhood is an absolute warzone, and his freind has been killed. The cops catch him at the scene of the crime with his .38 snubnose, and arrest him as a suspect.

In one of the more implausable scenes of this movie, the cheif of police recognises Kersey , and offers to drop the charges if he'll come out of retirement , and start eliminating the street hoods in the neighbourhood. Kersey aggrees ( though his arm has never needed much twisting anyway) He then gets a cab back to his old army buddy's apartment building, where he meets another neighbour who was also in the war. He shows Bronson the gang who killed his freind, and are terrorising the whole neighbourhood. They're easy to spot, because they all have shaven heads, and red facepaint, which not only makes them the most laughable looking gang since the baseballers in The Warriors, but also makes a good target for Bronson.

He begins by ordering a pistol that fires elephant gun cartriges ( I'm not kidding!). He orders it over the phone, probably from 'Big Friggin' Guns 'R' Us'. He blows a few gang members away, but then seems to tire of his new toy. We then see the very out of shape Bronson punching a mattress to get fit ( are you laughing yet?), and teaching the elderly how to make booby traps. This whole section of the movie was like Death Wish meets Cocoon. I really thought Bronson would say some throwaway line like - "We won't ever get old, and a hell of a lot of punks are gonna die!". We're also treated to some laughable love scenes between the very wooden Bronson, and a love interest who's thrown in for no other reason than to be killed off by the gang, so that Bronson can get even more pissed off and pull out his bigger toys. By the end, he's found a couple of Browning machine guns, and ordered a rocket launcher by mail ! Bronson reasons that 'a lot of people could get hurt if I use these' , but then regains his senses, realising that that's never stopped him before. He sprays the whole area with machine gun fire, and rockets in an action sequence that makes the climax of Bronx Warriors 2 seem downright realistic. Even the elderly get into the action, grabbing handguns they forget about when their homes were being pillaged earlier.Fans of Bill and Teds Excellent Adventure should note that Alex Winter has a small role as a gangmember. I almost expected to hear him yell "Excellent!" whenever he booted an old granny in the teeth, or "Bogus" whenever Bronson blew away one of his buddies. Deathwish 3 is good, mindless fun!